Square Yards: building a proptech business on a channel partner network

Context

Square Yards was founded in 2014 in Gurugram by Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta Shori. Where most Indian property portals made money selling listings and leads to brokers, Square Yards chose to sit inside the transaction. It earns when a home is sold, when a loan is disbursed, when an interior job is done, and when a rental is managed.

That choice pushed it towards a different kind of scale. Instead of hiring thousands of in-house sales staff for every city, Square Yards recruited independent brokers and financial advisors as channel partners, gave them inventory and tools, and shared the commission. Today it calls itself a full-lifecycle platform covering search, financing, interiors and property management, with operations in India, the UAE, Canada and Australia.

In June 2026 it crossed a $1 billion valuation and is preparing to list. For developers and channel partners, the interesting part is not the valuation. It is how a CP network, run through software, became the company's main growth engine.

What they built

Square Yards runs four businesses under one group, per Online Marketplaces' FY26 summary:

• Square Yards: new home sales and resale transactions.
• Urban Money: home loan and credit distribution across banks and NBFCs.
• Interior Company: home interiors and renovation.
• Azuro: rental and property management.

It also owns PropVR, a 3D and virtual tour tool for developers, acquired in 2021.

The piece that ties these together is Square Connect, an app and web platform for channel partners that the company has run since around 2015-16. According to the Square Connect page, it offers:

• Access to project inventory from 100+ developers, which partners can market to their own buyers.
• A CRM for tracking clients and deals.
• Site visit registration, so a partner's claim on a buyer is recorded before the visit.
• Brokerage tracking, with advance brokerage and differential payouts.
• Loan referral with payouts when a client's loan is disbursed through Urban Money.
• A deal-matching feature and a shared lead pool.

The page claims 1.5 lakh+ channel partners on the platform and ₹10 crore+ in partner payouts disbursed. These are company claims we could not verify independently.

The same partner network powers Urban Money. Entrackr reported in October 2025 that 87% of Urban Money's business comes from aggregated channels, mainly real estate agents and financial advisors, and only 13% from its own operations. It works with more than 95 banks and NBFCs; a June 2026 Entrackr report puts that at 150+.

The numbers

These are company-reported figures from press releases and interviews. Square Yards has not yet published a prospectus, so audited net profit or loss for FY25 and FY26 is not in the public reports we reviewed.

FY25 (Entrackr, May 2025):

• Revenue: ₹1,410 crore, up 41% from ₹1,001 crore in FY24.
• Gross profit: ₹316 crore, up 52% from ₹208 crore, a 22% gross margin.
• EBITDA: ₹46 crore. The company's FY26 release restates FY25 EBITDA as ₹48 crore.
• Gross transaction value: ₹59,093 crore, up from ₹40,828 crore.
• Transactions: 1.86 lakh.
• Employee costs: ₹618 crore, 38% of total expenses.
• Revenue mix: 90% mortgages and real estate services, 10% interiors and digital products.

Urban Money (Entrackr, October 2025):

• Revenue: ₹233 crore in FY23, ₹454 crore in FY24, ₹714 crore in FY25.
• 1.55 lakh loan transactions in FY25.
• H1 FY26 revenue above ₹500 crore.

On these figures, Urban Money made up roughly half of group revenue in FY25.

FY26 (Online Marketplaces, April 2026; company release, July 2026):

• Revenue: ₹2,086 crore, up 48%.
• Gross profit: ₹476 crore, up 49%, at a 23% margin.
• Adjusted EBITDA: ₹176 crore, an 8% margin, up from 3%.
• India: 88% of revenue, up 57% year on year.
• Customers acquired: 2,73,643.
• Property transaction value: ₹13,236 crore.
• FY27 guidance: 40%+ revenue growth and roughly double the FY26 EBITDA.

Funding:

• $35 million from South Korea's Smilegate at a $935 million post-money valuation, November 2025.
• ₹900 crore (about $95 million) in debt and equity, anchored by EAAA Alternatives with Muzinich & Co., June 2026, at a valuation above $1 billion. Entrackr reported talks for another $50 to 60 million at about $1.6 billion.
• Earlier backers include Bennett Coleman & Co, Genkai Capital, ADM Capital and Reliance Group, which Entrackr reported holds about 11%.

What worked, what broke

What worked

Partners instead of payroll. Square Yards did not need to staff every micro-market. It gave independent brokers inventory and a fair, visible commission, and let them bring the buyers. For Urban Money, 87% of business arrives this way.

One client, several revenue lines. A buyer who books a flat through a partner may also need a loan, interiors and later a tenant. Square Yards set itself up to earn on each. The FY25 revenue split shows mortgages and real estate services at 90% of revenue, with loans the single largest engine.

Making the partner's work trackable. Site visit registration, a CRM and payout tracking address the complaints CPs raise most often with developers: disputed leads, unclear commissions and late payments. When a partner can see a claim and a payout in the app, they have a reason to route the next deal through it.

Operating leverage showed up in FY26. Gross margin held at 22 to 23% across FY25 and FY26 while EBITDA margin moved from 3% to 8%.

What broke, or is still open

Thin margins. A 23% gross margin and an 8% EBITDA margin leave little room for a bad quarter in housing sales or a cut in lender payouts. The company guides to double-digit EBITDA margins but has not reached them yet.

Heavy people costs. Employee costs were ₹618 crore in FY25, 38% of expenses, which sits uneasily with the asset-light partner story.

The IPO date slipped. In July 2025 Inc42 reported a plan to file draft papers for a ₹2,000 crore IPO between December 2025 and March 2026. By June 2026, reports described the company as still preparing for a listing and raising more private money first.

Numbers that move. FY25 EBITDA appears as ₹46 crore in one release and ₹48 crore in another. Lender partner counts vary between 95+ and 150+ across reports. Until audited statements appear in a prospectus, treat headline figures as company claims.

How to apply this at your scale

The lesson for an Indian developer or CP firm is not to build a national Square Connect. It is that partners route deals through the platform that gives them the most sellable inventory and the clearest payout record. Square Connect works because a broker can see stock from 100+ developers, register a buyer and track brokerage in one place.

At smaller scale, the same idea is a closed inventory marketplace: one platform where several developers' projects are listed for a defined network of partners.

It fits two kinds of business:

• A large CP firm or aggregator working with several developers and many sub-brokers. Instead of forwarding brochures and price sheets on WhatsApp, you publish every mandated project once, and sub-brokers pick what to sell.
• A developer group with several projects or JV partners that wants its partner panel to see all live inventory in one place.

What to build first:

1. Live inventory from each developer. Tower, unit, configuration, price band and status, updated from one source. Partners pitching sold units wastes everyone's time.
2. Buyer registration before the site visit. A timestamped claim of partner, buyer and project settles most lead disputes before they start.
3. Payout tracking per deal. Booking status, brokerage due and paid date, visible to the partner. Late and disputed commissions are the most common reason CPs drift to another developer.
4. Partner onboarding and access. Empanelment documents, RERA agent registration numbers, and which partners can see which projects.
5. Adjacent services on the same deal. If you refer home loans, record referrals and payouts against the booking. Square Yards shows the loan side can grow as large as the sale itself.

Start with the projects and partners you already work with. A marketplace is only as good as how current its inventory is, so fix the update process before you add features.